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Monday, November 20, 2006

History Thoughts...

You wake up and in that fuzzy moment between waking up and staying asleep, the thoughts get strange and weird. And, when I was reading this, I had one of those horrid thoughts.

That the history right now has a lot of very awful paralels between right now and the end of the Roman Republic. Not the least of which is...

Wars between "insurgents" supported my major competing powers to the Republic/United States.

Piracy/drug dealers that are a major threat to the government's authorty to rule and will probably have to be faced with major military power that will take few prisoners and even fewer survivors.

The military is displeased with both sides of the political authority, but the rank-and-file are fans of some of them...

...and the political authority has a major level of "crazy" going on, as the major factions in the government seem intent upon slagging each other. Just that, so far in the United States, nobody has resorted to anything more than character assasination...yet.

There's probably more, but it's nearly 7 am, and I'm trying to survive in "interesting" times of my own.

UPDATE: Some more elaboration on my thoughts.

History has a tendency of not repeating itself, but having echos of what has happened before and what will happen again, as history is the story of people in all their glory and stupidity.

Whe the Founding Fathers made the United States, they drew upon the history of Rome and how it failed, how governments in Europe did things, and they were a well-educated, well-read, well-motivated bunch. They were serious people that were intent upon doing the right thing, and they had seen how some of their libertarian/small government thoughts came up and came about during the Articles of Confederation.

They were, in very few cases, hardened ideologes. And, even then, it was a rare member of the Constitutional Committee that would not get a beer with an opponent, and talk about why they thought they were right.

In short, America dodged so many bullets, it wasn't funny. The Constitution that came from it was a conservative one-one that would not have much faith in the "Liberty, Equality, Fraterinity" of the French Revolution, or many other revolutions since them. It assumed human fallability, but the eternal striving towards human improvment-that perfection was impossible, but the goal was forever upwards to bigger and better things. And, that it was the job of the government to do a few things-and then leave people the hell alone.

If there was to be a Constitutional Committee today, it would probably look like something that even a Tranzi would think was too liberal, or it would be a document of possible repression-on either side of the polticial fence. Would you want Hillary Clinton or Rush Limbaugh to write the Constitution?

(Letting me write the Constitution would be fun...not the least of which would be several modifcations, a Second Amendment that would pretty much make owning a gun mandatory, tax rule modications that would make all income tax a flat tax...)

My hopes, as this rant comes to an end? That the United States shall weather her storms, and there will not be a Triumverate-in name or in deed.